The Neapolitan pizza and pasta restaurant at 1540 Frankfort Ave. opened this month with little fanfare.

While many restaurants come out with a big splash, Lupo chose to fly under the radar.

"We wanted to focus on service and quality," said Lupo co-owner Adam Turla. "It was intentional. We didn't have an announce date, we didn't have a press plan. We knew word of mouth would be enough to get us started."

So far, so good for Turla; his wife, Sarah; and co-owner and brother-in-law Max Balliet, who himself has run the popular Holy Mole taco truck for years.

If Turla's name sounds familiar, it might be because you're a music fan. He and his wife, Sarah, are in the band Murder by Death, an Indie rock band born in Bloomington, Indiana.

"I've been going [to Italy] every year of my life,” he said. “Most of my family is over there. I've had Neapolitan pizza from hundreds of places over the years, and once you've had it you've got to have it right.”

Siblings “Sarah and Max went when they were teenagers and it made a huge impression on both of them,” Turla said.

Their shared passion for Italian food sparked a conversation about opening a restaurant.

“Sarah and I talked about it since we met 17 years ago,” Turla said. A first attempt was foiled when the space they planned to rent didn't work out, he said.

Then while looking at real estate for houses to flip – yet another passion – “I found this building,” Turla said of the 1860 structure now home to Lupo. “I brought Sarah with me and we walked in were like, 'oh this is Lupo, this is the restaurant.'”

Before the 160-year-old building could become Lupo – named as a nod to the she-wolf from the legend of Rome's founding – it needed a full rebuild. So they got multiple loans and got busy ripping out floors, and knocking down walls.

“I spent every day there for the last year,” he said. They re-purposed as much original material as they could; joists became the bar, floor boards were turned into benches and shelves. They exposed brick for the walls and kept the building as close to the original design as possible.

But the star of the restaurant is a Ferrari-red wood fired pizza oven, where Max Balliet can be found deftly sliding pizzas into the nearly 1,000-degree heat, and out just moments later, perfectly charred.

That's what characterizes a good Neapolitan pizza, Turla said.

The intense heat “creates a leoparding, little black spots on the top and bottom of the crust which adds a little bitterness … the crust is everything.”

What did they find after extensive tastings? “It's very nuanced,” Turla said. “The devil's in the details.”

As happy diners tear into the pizza, Turla hopes they keep one thing in mind.

“We didn't just stumble on this style,” Turla said. “This is what we eat, this is the place that we've traveled to the most. We see it as sharing the thing that we know the most about. It's not random, it's a very earnest attempt to share something we love.”